Shards
by Zion Angel
Summary: Sometimes the hardest thing is to be with the one you cannot love. Written for The Looking Glass Fanfiction Challenge.


Also written for the very first Fanfiction Challenge on The Looking Glass Forum. Because one just wasn't enough. :)

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Shards

By ZionAngel

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They quickly silenced themselves when they heard the footsteps outside stop at the door, and open it. "Trinity? You in here?"

He glanced at her in the darkness. She touched a finger to her mouth with the hand that held her army knife, pressing the blade against her cheek.

"Trinity, come on. Where are you?" He was inside the room now, by a few feet. Still, the pair on the floor, behind one of the transformers in the engine room, kept quiet. "For God's sake, Trin, I can smell the food." Still nothing. "Fine," the One muttered groggily, turning around and retreating through the door. "Be that way. I'm going back to bed." He shut the door with a squeak and a thud.

Ghost looked back at the woman beside him once the door was closed, able to make her out clearly enough in the dim emergency light with his dark-adjusted eyes. She was smirking at her little joke, and cut another section from her pear and ate it. She was so beautiful when she smiled. She was always beautiful, in every sense of the word. He loved spending time with her, both in Zion and here on the ship. He especially loved these blessed occasions when their sister ships met within the sewers, and one ship or the other was fortunate enough to have just come from Zion. And when they knew it would happen in advance, as was the case for him a week ago, they would always bring each other some fresh fruit to share, whatever they were growing in Zion at the time.

Moments like these made it bearable to love her with all his heart and be granted only a tiny piece of hers in return. It was a sacred, special piece that was very dear to her, but it was far to small.

He watched her for a few moments. He watched the slender fingers of one hand take the knife and slowly peel away a piece, and then watched as the slender fingers of the other hand picked it up, and brought it up to her mouth. He became transfixed on that point, and his breath quickened as he watched her thin lips part just enough to slip the slice in, and close again. A tiny bit of juice lingered on her lips, and he let himself imagine kissing it away.

Unfortunately, that was the precise moment she noticed his staring, and forced him to turn away. "What?"

He grinned, buying himself a moment to let his heart slow. "Did you ever wonder if the Oracle is ever wrong?"

"Tried not to think about her too much at all, if I could help it." She grinned at the annoyed look she received, and became more serious. "Sometimes. But she wasn't."

"First time I went to her, I asked her if she was ever wrong."

"Presumably _after_ she gave you your prophecy?"

Only part of his mind heard the question. The rest was recollecting the day in question. _She'll love you, Ghost, that's for sure. But as a brother, a friend. I'm sorry, sweetie, but she'll never love you like you love her._

"Yeah."

"What'd she say?" she asked him through her full mouth.

She had smiled when he asked her the question, tapping her cigarette on the side of the ashtray. _It's been known to happen. I don't know everything, after all. Things change in ways I don't foresee. You can always choose to walk a different path, even at the very last moment._

"Sometimes." His heart had soared when he heard that - there was hope for him. She would see - he would _make_ her see - what a good man he was. They were already so close - surely that was all he needed to do, the last little push he needed, for her to fall in love with him.

_I'm sorry, sweetie, but she really won't love you. You two, I'm not wrong about. Not in the end, anyway._ He didn't understand that last part for about four years. The Neb and Logos had both been docked at the same time, and they hadn't seen each other in months. They missed each other terribly, of course, and they spent their first full evening back in Zion together, with dinner, dancing, drinks. Neither of them had one too many, but only just enough. Somehow they wound up back in his apartment, and they ended up in bed together. He'd been so enthralled by her, and still dared to hope, and he'd made love to her without hesitation, and for a little while, or more precisely, the time in between tumbling into bed and falling asleep, he had been the happiest man in two worlds.

It was the sound of the shower that woke him the next morning, both literally and figuratively. Even through his slight headache, he could now realize that she was just lonely and sex-starved, and she trusted that he would not leave her hurt. It wasn't love for her. Just two friends who seriously needed to get laid. If anyone had asked, she wouldn't say they made love - they just had sex. Once out of the shower she dressed, and invited him to breakfast. He exaggerated the pains of his hangover, and sent her off on her own. He avoided her when he could for the rest of their stay, and flat out refused to let himself end up alone with her. He didn't blame her, she didn't know. For a while, it just hurt to much to see her.

He fought desperately with the Oracle when she told him. _But you can't know that. It hasn't happened yet, so you can't say that you can't be wrong about this, not until -_

_Because, Ghost, she will come to love another man._

In retrospect, he usually pegged this as the moment the first tiny crack formed in his heart, the very moment it began to slowly, agonizingly slowly, break. _Who?_ Why? Why couldn't it be him? Why had fate cursed him with this unrequited love?

_A man who will love her even more than you. A man who will make her unimaginably happy._

"Sometimes. But not about what she told me."

Trinity peeled one of the last bits of fruit from the stem, and ate it slowly before continuing. "What did you want her to be wrong about?"

Ghost shook his head dismissively. "Doesn't matter. She wasn't wrong about it."

Trinity, in all her kindness, didn't press the issue. They fell back into silence, and he was able to watch her again. He was not as peacefully happy as he had been a few minutes ago, and he regretted ever bringing up the subject. He wondered, sometimes, as he did now, if he would have been better off having never met her, or at least having cut ties with her after he spoke with the Oracle. He wouldn't have this pain looming over him every day, attacking his heart and breaking it a little more each time he saw her. But as he watched here finish the last bit of pear off the stem, he decided, as much as he loved her, that he would rather live with her and his unrequited love than live with constant loneliness in his heart.

Trinity folded her pocket knife, and stood with it in one hand, and her second pear in the other.

"Aren't you going to finish that?" he asked quietly.

She stared down at the shadowed fruit in her hand. "Actually, I thought Neo should have some, too."

"Oh..."

She slipped the knife into her pocket. "Good night, Ghost. Say goodbye before you guys leave, all right? Even if you have to wake me up."

"Yeah," he sighed. "Good night."

She gave him one of her most genuine smiles before she left. Every time she walked away from him like this, she took one of those tiny, broken shards of his heart with her.


End file.
